Why Flash Storage Takes a Step Forward

Its part of our everyday life. Its in our smartphones, our laptops, and our servers. We make hard drives and memory cards out of it. We rely on flash storage to hold our valuable data and keep it safe because of its greater robustness and durability compared to traditional storage media that uses optical lasers or magnetic platters. Modern flash storage, to put it simply, is faster and less prone to failure than other storage technologies.

The downside to it has always been cost and size. Flash storage costs more than its competitors and cant hold as much data. Recently, however, tech giants like Samsung and Intel have been challenging the status quo by exploring new methods of placing the cells that comprise Flash storage vertically instead of the traditional horizontally; this allows a greater density of storage capacity than ever before. How much greater? Samsungs PM1633a hard drive holds 16 terabytes of data in its flash memory, a fourfold increase over other solid-state hard drives using flash storage available on the market.

For right now, these technological breakthroughs come with a price tag to match. While there isn’t yet an official price for the PM1633a, some tech experts expect it to cost $5,000 or more. That puts it well out of reach of most IT teams and almost any consumer, but all hope is not lost. Those same tech experts expect to see this level of storage technology available at consumer prices within three to five years.

In the meantime, there is speculation about what this could mean across several industries. Hard drives of this size, available at reasonable prices, could actually undercut the growing trend towards cloud computing and virtualization.

Many consumers wonder, what is virtualization?, but seasoned IT pros know all about it. Enterprises now live and die based on virtualized servers and storage that obviate the need for constant hardware refreshes, replacements, and upgrades. That could all change when it again becomes feasible to bring all of an organization’s data back in-house as a result of this increase in storage magnitude.

These new manufacturing techniques have also opened the doors on exciting new possibilities that could revolutionize not just storage but memory as well. 3D Xpoint is an experimental technology created by Intel and Micro that would replace the volatile DRAM traditionally used as a computer’s “working memory” or RAM with something 1,000 times faster than flash and 10 times denser than DRAM.

Analysts look forward to this brand new innovation permitting leaps and bounds to be made in fields like artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and good old-fashioned consumer products. Everybody wants faster computers that can hold more data, and this promises to be the first truly massive shakeup to the field of memory and storage in decades.

The NAND flash storage that we have now has been around since the 1980’s. It briefly seemed like its star was on the rise when solid-state hard drives first exploded into popularity, spurred by promises of faster speed and greater reliability. Unfortunately, the realities of cost, lack of storage density, and subpar write times kept it from catching on in the business world. Consumers flocked to it, drawn by solid-state drives’ superior read speeds that allowed for faster gaming and other computer tasks, but business needs simply weren’t satisfied by what flash had to offer.

Today, however, new flash technologies are breathing life back into the idea and its got many tech experts eagerly looking towards the future. One thing is certain: the developments we are seeing today in flash are just the first hints of new products and technologies that are on the horizon.